Is it a Boy or a Girl? aims to explore what manliness is and what it means to be a man. Embedded in this seemingly simple question is the expectation that gender and masculinity in particular should be immediately recognisable, stable, and legible.

In Gender Trouble, Judith Butler argues that masculinity and femininity are not innate qualities but performed acts¹. Gender is something learned, inherited, rehearsed, and repeated a performance that can be put on and taken off, yet often lasts a lifetime. Masculinity, in this sense, is not something one is, but something one does.

These shifting ideals are explored through the cast of John Talbot’s effigy. Medieval effigies functioned as visual declarations of status, belief, and identity. Through carved symbols, weapons, posture, animals, armour, and books the effigy communicated how an individual wished to be remembered.

Using the symbol of the dog as a recurring motif, this project interrogates how masculinity is communicated through repetition and symbolism. The dog becomes a metaphor for performing loyalty to power, to tradition, and to an idea of masculinity that demands obedience and replication. By isolating and re-contextualising this symbol, the project questions how masculine ideals persist, mutate, and reassert themselves long after their original social function has disappeared.